Technology and People Committed to Saving Lives
Baron Services was founded in 1988 by Bob Baron, a television meteorologist. Over the course of his tenure at several stations, Mr. Baron had seen the need for improved detection of significant weather events, as well as improved accuracy and site-specificity. The corresponding increase in severe weather information, he believed, could result in earlier warning times and fewer lives lost during severe weather outbreaks.

Baron Services is based in Huntsville, Ala., originally growing out of a business relationship with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration during the late-eighties. The company secured its first two customers, Morton Thiokol and Huntsville Utilities, from the arrangement. Since then, Baron has grown significantly, maintaining a focus on several avenues in need of weather information. These customers include television broadcasters, emergency management, numerous government entities, corporations and international weather agencies. But despite its growth, Baron Services' mission remains the same now as it was in the beginning: to produce tools that provide accurate, site-specific weather information. The company philosophy is solidified by technology and people committed to saving lives.

The NASA/Baron partnership had the company disseminating localized lightning data. Baron later expanded that display technology, incorporating radar to create the first street-level storm tracking system, OmniWxTrac™.

The Storm Tracking Leader
The fledgling storm tracker was unique, in that it was the first storm tracking system not only able to show storms at a very local level, but also post estimated times of arrival for storms moving into communities. It was the first such system to combine radar imagery with lightning data. In 1994, the original OmniWxTrac underwent a major enhancement, and in the process was renamed FasTrac®. The new system built substantially upon its predecessor, adding a higher level of user-friendliness and functionality. Baron's patented, highly accurate storm tracking process, introduced in FasTrac, remains the standard by which all other storm trackers are judged. The accompanying City Streets® database, meanwhile, ensures that a storm's effects can be precisely tracked down to the level of individual neighborhoods.

During the mid-1990's, Baron experienced an unprecedented growth spurt, and in its maturity developed a host of new products and abilities: the display and analysis of NEXRAD data; instant alerts; a line of sophisticated Live Doppler radar; Internet display of radar data; radar data accessible to emergency management agencies, and even dedicated weather sensors and an interactive weather kiosk. Perhaps the most innovative of these, however, was the powerful VIPIR system, which displays NEXRAD data within a 3D environment. Additionally, VIPIR analyzes NEXRAD data to determine localized areas of intense wind shear, hail and flooding.

Then, in 1999, the first Baron radar developed totally in-house at the Huntsville facility went on-line. The XDD (Xtreme Digital Definition®) line of radars set a new standard for what was possible from live Doppler. XDD radars are able to capture extremely high- resolution storm data at speeds up to 6 RPM.

The company also unveiled the next generation of storm tracking, FasTrac Millennium®, in 1999. With FasTrac Millennium, Baron used its own proprietary algorithms to generate accurate, timely Storm Cell Identification Tracks (SCIT's), which precisely locate areas of severe weather activity. This technology has also been implemented into SAF-T-Net™, Baron’s localized weather alert system.

Baron Services’ newest products are aimed at any type of weather event that may affect the populace. A newly-released Hydrology Package, for instance, allows users to discern the immediate effects of rainfall throughout a region, displaying near real-time and predicted rainfall totals within the mapping display.

Now over 15 years old, the company is applying its proven meteorological experience to international endeavors, as well as continuing its commitments to avenues previously unexplored. The company has amassed over 400 customers in the United States since its inception in 1988. As of Spring 2002, three international clients have been added to the Baron customer list, as well.

Additionally Baron has several affiliated companies that provide exceptional weather expertise.

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